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Facebook offers video solution for emerging markets

Lauren Kate Rawlins
By Lauren Kate Rawlins, ITWeb digital and innovation contributor.
Johannesburg, 30 Oct 2015
Facebook has created a lightweight video advert option for emerging markets.
Facebook has created a lightweight video advert option for emerging markets.

Facebook will give small business owners the opportunity to take advantage of online video adverts.

The social network has developed a lightweight video advert option, called Slideshow, which creates adverts effortlessly and uses minimal data.

The aim of Slideshow is to: "Reach everyone, across any level of connectivity, how and when they want to connect." This was explained to journalists from across the world in a live-streamed press conference last night.

"We are constantly working to build ways for people to connect through Facebook regardless of connection speeds and device types. This also means helping marketers reach people in the best way, and that means creating solutions to make this possible in different environments," says Nunu Ntshingila, Facebook head of Africa.

"Slideshow is a new tool and ad format to help businesses big and small take advantage of video more easily while using less of a person's data plan."

Slideshow is a video ad made from a series of still images. These images can be uploaded by the user or selected from a library of stock photos. It is meant to be used by small businesses that do not have the resources to create actual videos.

Two reports about online video adverts were released at the Cannes Lions international advertising conference in June. One showed online videos as the fastest growing category of Internet adverts. The second predicted online video will overtake TV advertising in 12 key markets, representing 28% of global ad spending by 2017.

Facebook recently rolled out a feature that automatically starts playing videos on mobile and desktop as users scroll over them in their newsfeed.

Earlier this month, Facebook announced it would start experimenting with its main app to make video more prominent while incorporating similar features from video rival, YouTube.

"Online video is the next frontier of the media industry at large, not just an extension of social media," said Brian Neilson, director at research firm BMI-TechKnowledge, at the time.

In April, Facebook reported its users were watching four billion videos a day, compared with three billion in January and only one billion in September.

In South Africa, Facebook has grown its user base by 8% in the past year, from 12 million to 13 million, according to the SA Social Media Landscape Report 2015.

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